


here to live; alive to feel

by suchaboy



Category: Wanna One (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, M/M, robot! Jihoon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-20
Updated: 2018-05-20
Packaged: 2019-05-01 03:32:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,101
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14511621
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/suchaboy/pseuds/suchaboy
Summary: in which daniel stumbles his way through life, finding something real along the way. (Alternatively, Daniel gets a robot assistant named Jihoon.)





	here to live; alive to feel

**Author's Note:**

> This was originally inspired by this prompt: https://twitter.com/allwinkprompts/status/953248400983519232. But it really doesn't follow the prompt that much. I also took a lot of inspiration from Black Mirror's "Be Right Back" which is probably one of the best hours of television that I have watched. If this fic feels incomplete, that's because I planned for this to be a much longer fic than I was really capable of writing. Regardless, I hope that you might enjoy it, even if it's just a little.

“Hey, wait.”

“What?”

“Hold my hand.” Daniel smiles as he feels the warmth of the small, slightly rough hand that takes his own, pausing for a moment. He takes the opportunity to etch the sensation into the back of his mind, not wanting to forget the feeling of his hand enveloping another.

He looks up from their intertwined hands, breath hitching as he looks into the boy’s blown brown eyes, scribing the spectacle into his memory. Without breaking eye-contact, he brings their hands up to his mouth, pressing his lips into the back of the boy’s hand. He smells of jasmine and cardamom, and, as Daniel finds out caressing his cheek with free hand and taking those plush pink lips into his own, he tastes of strawberries and roses. 

Some time later, when their lips have finally parted, Daniel still feels the soft grasp of both the boy’s hands, inextricably connected with his own.

 

The first thing Daniel notices when he wakes up, before his actions even consciously register in his head, is that he’s grasping at his sheets, fingers desperately trying to find a hold on the smooth cotton. The second thing he notices is the blaring alarm bells the Daniel of last night ingeniously chose to be the first sound Daniel of the morning he hears and promptly hates enough to actually shift out of his warm bed to shut off. Third, he is met with the crushing realization that what he experienced and felt with every inch of his being was not real. 

What’s real is the fact that it’s 8am on a Tuesday morning, and he has six hours of class to attend, and he is alone. He gives up his sheets one last sleepy tug and heaves himself up and off his top bunk for the day. Graciously, getting up is always just a bit easier when he has already gotten up.

The dream slips his mind until his lunch hour when he meets Seongwoo and Minhyun at their favorite boba place close to campus. Seongwoo beams when he spots Daniel approaching the place. Ever straight to the point, Seongwoo opens, “When do you end class on Friday?”

Daniel rolls his eyes and responds, “Nice to see you, too, friend, how was your weekend? I sent my schedule in the chat literally last night, but my class ends at 2.” He meets eyes briefly with Minhyun who has been exasperatedly but fondly witnessing the exchange and gives him a subtle nod. 

He receives a knowing smile in return right as Seongwoo responds, “Yeah okay I saw that but Econ is webcasted anyway, so let’s go to San Francisco, yeah? We can leave at 1:30.” He garnishes the statement with the pretense of a coy smile. It comes off as more playfully cocky than anything as he ushers both Daniel and Minhyun into the shop.

Daniel furrows his eyebrows, interjecting immediately, “Wait, wait, wait. I have a midterm next week. What on earth are we going to be doing in SF that’s more important?”

Seongwoo sighs dramatically, asking “Do you not know? It’s the keynote for the newest human AI. And guess who got three tickets?”

Daniel falters as the screws turn in his head, but quickly blurts out, “No fucking way, are you serious?”

“Dead,” Seongwoo says, right before he turns to the cashier to order his bento and boba.

 

It is not until Daniel sits down with his jasmine milk tea that the memories of last night come flooding back. The aroma of the jasmine tea makes him pause, and he racks his brain for what he dreamt of. At first, small details trickle in slowly - the scent of cardamom, the taste of strawberries, a soft but earnest touch - then all at once.

“Guys I had the best dream last night,” Daniel revels.

“Okay, what was it about?” Minhyun prompts.

“I don’t know. It was just- there was this boy, and he was super pretty. I guess we were dating or something.” Daniel finishes shyly, “We held hands and we kissed and it was kind of more than amazing.” Not sure what to do with himself and this newly retrieved information, he takes a big gulp of his bubble tea, almost choking on the tapioca.

Minhyun and Seongwoo exchange a look, eyes carrying a conversation that no one else could ever begin to understand, not even Daniel. 

Seongwoo responds, “That’s cute, but who was the boy?”

“I don’t know! I’ve never seen him before.”

“But you have,” Seongwoo pauses dramatically. “Every face you’ve ever seen in a dream has been one you’ve seen before. The human mind can’t make up faces.”

 

“Sounds fake, but okay.”

“I’m serious!” Seongwoo near whines, and nudges Minhyun in the hopes of obtaining another person on his side.  
Minhyun says, “Well there’s no way you could possibly prove whether someone in your dream whom you don’t actually recognize is someone you’ve seen before.” Seongwoo deflates. “But if you had a good, close enough look at him like it sounds you did, your mind had to come up with a great amount of detail. I’d wager it’s someone you’ve come across before, or least based off of someone’s face.”

Daniel sits back in his chair, contemplates for a bit, and shakes his head. ”I have no idea. It was just a dream anyway,” he finishes with a self-deprecating smile, “At any rate, I’m still painfully single.”

Seongwoo rolls his eyes at that, and counters, “Yes, which is exactly why we need to go out! How you expect to meet anyone holed up in your room playing Fortnite every day is beyond me.”

“It’s a great game, Seongwoo.”

“Okay, bro. Okay.”

 

Friday comes quicker than Daniel could have anticipated, with classes and professors and exams being unrelenting as always. Before he knows it, he’s walking out of his Statistics lecture just to encounter his devil of a best friend, with a grin to match.

 

He’s only visited a few times now, usually too caught up in his endless stream of assignments to take day trips to the city, but Daniel thinks he will never quite get used to the grandiosity of it all, with the high rises and bustling streets.

The moment they walk into the mall, Daniel feels his breath taken away. In the center of the mall, there must be hundreds of people, all crowded towards a stage. It’s easy to see why though, for a boy stands on a podium, in a glass cylindrical encasing. With his eyes closed, he seems peacefully asleep, although that’s impossible given that he’s standing straight up. Once Daniel catches sight of him, he can’t look away, can’t help but think he knows the boy from somewhere.

As Daniel get closer, he tunes into the amplified voice of the keynote speaker. “After countless prototypes, I can say with great pride and immense honor that we can now unveil our flagship robot assistant series, Starboy!” With that, the man presses a button on a remote and the glass encasing opens up to reveal the boy, now with his eyes open. The crowd silences for a moment before bursting into thundering applause.

It’s amazing how real, how tangible the Starboy seems. He even reacts to the crowd’s applause, seeming surprised and even a little shy. For one second, he swears that they make eye contact. Meeting those eyes of sparkly brown, Daniel realizes. “Oh my God.”

Seongwoo immediately brings a hand to Daniel’s arm, sensing his panic, and in a hushed voice asks, “What’s up?”

Daniel, barely able to break his gaze away from the Starboy, turns to both Seongwoo and Minhyun. “That’s the boy from my dream.”

Seongwoo and Minhyun both raise their eyebrows, in a display of uncanny synchronization. Minhyun interjects, “That’s impossible, unless you’ve seen him before?” ending the sentence with an upwards inflection like he’s challenging Daniel to provide an eloquent enough explanation for the whole situation.

“I must have seen an article about Starboy before,” Daniel concludes. “That’s so weird,” he says, almost speaking to himself as he turns his attention back to the boy- the robot.

As if he can sense one more pair of eyes on him on top of the hundred others, the Starboy looks at Daniel, with an unreadable expression. By the time the keynote presentation ends, the Starboy seems much more comfortable in the situation, giving the crowd a final wave and even throwing in a wink that causes some of the younger girls in the audience to swoon.

At the press of a button, the Starboy goes back to sleep, suddenly and without warning. The glass encasing comes up once again, and the crowds silences once again before breaking out into applause even more thunderous than in the beginning.

The crowd disperses, but Daniel, almost without realizing it, approaches the stage, wanting to get a closer look, to confirm it to himself. It’s almost as if Seongwoo and Minhyun can read his mind, realize how personal this feels, and instead of following in his footsteps, they excuse themselves with some half-assed excuse and promise to catch up later.

“Quite something, isn’t he?” Daniel near jumps and turns around at the sound of the voice right next to him. The man from the keynote is still viewing the Starboy with a look of great pride and even wonder but turns to address Daniel with a twinkle in his eye.

“Yeah, he is. You know, I think I saw the articles on Twitter, but seeing him then and seeing him now are two incredibly different experiences. On the internet, it’s almost easy to believe, but in person… By the time you finished talking and you powered him down, I had almost forgot he wasn’t human.”

The man listens attentively but an expression that indicates that somehow without even needing Daniel to tell him, he knew. “Yes, he tends to have that effect.. Say, how would you like for Jihoon to assist you for the next month? I think you would have a lot to gain from it. It would be an experience.”

Daniel stops for a moment before deciding to address only the least intimidating portion of what has just been said to him. “Jihoon?”

“Yes, that is his name.” Jihoon. Daniel tries out the name in his head, thinking back to his dream and visualizing those sparkly eyes and plush lips, now able to match a name to his face. Breaking him out of his thoughts, the man brings out a tablet computer and hands it to Daniel. “What’s yours?”

“What’s my what?”

 

“Your name.”

“Daniel.”

 

“Okay Daniel, give me your address, and we can send Jihoon to you for a week trial. No strings attached”

Daniel hesitates. “You know, I’m not really sure what I would need a robot assistant for. Not to shirk your generosity or anything! I appreciate it but I guess I just don’t see why this, why me, you know?”

The man, unfazed, responds plainly but vaguely, “I see the potential.”

Daniel gives him the address.

 

Life carries on perfectly normally for the next few days. Daniel pulls himself out of bed to go to lecture, and procrastinates on deadlines until he begins to panic enough to actually get work done. He takes gaming breaks, and social media breaks that last probably too long. 

He knows he’s not so much resting as actively trying to avoid his assignments when he opens up Tinder and begins swiping. Most of the profiles are cringeworthy, full of selfies that make Daniel question whether these men even possess the capability to pose without raising their eyebrows and crinkling their foreheads up like circa 2012 Justin Bieber. The one that aren’t, he does swipe right on. He matches with quite a few of them who seem interesting and cute enough. Once he starts talking to them though, he just gets the overwhelming feeling of how fake and artificial it is to him.

He’s sure that if he were to meet any of these men in person, he would be fine getting to know them, over lunch or boba or something. But him alone in his bare apartment bedroom striking up vaguely stilted conversation without absolute strangers? He closes the app feeling even less productive than before and launches himself onto his bed. When he opens his eyes, he’s facing the medium cardboard box that had arrived yesterday and that he had been promptly ignoring since yesterday.

Even now, he’s not sure how a person, a robot person even, could fit into that box. Faced with the idea, he supposes he might as well find out.

He gets his scissors and cuts enough of the tape on the box to be able to pry it open, still unsure what to expect. What he sees turns out to be exactly not that.

Inside the box is a big foil bag and an instruction manual. Confused, Daniel begins reading. The manual instructs him to get a lukewarm bath running, place the foil bag inside, and leave the room for 10 minutes. He does exactly that.

Those 10 minutes turn out to be a strange 10 minutes indeed. He’s not sure exactly what to do, so he stress cleans his apartment and pours himself his third cup of coffee for the day. He’s in the middle of taking a sip from his favorite mug when he hears the sound of water splashing and a bathroom door opening. That would be weird normally since he lives alone, but now it seems even stranger with the knowledge that just 10 minutes ago it was just him and a foil bag. Now, it’s him, an empty foil bag, and whoever just opened that bathroom door. Daniel sets his mug down, gets up, and walks toward the bathroom.

Just as he turns the corner, he runs right into a modest 5 feet 8 inches of incredibly naked teenage boy. For a brief moment, they put their hands on each others’ arms to stabilize themselves, after which Jihoon immediately stumbles back and covers his crotch area with a blush to boot. “Hi, my name’s Jihoon. I’ll be your personal assistant for the next 5 days, 11 hours, 24 minutes, and 38 seconds.”

Daniel isn’t exactly sure of the standard protocol when addressing one’s new, naked assistant robot boy, so he opts for, “I’m Daniel,” and a short, nervous laugh.

“It’s nice to meet you, Daniel. Although, it would be better if I had some clothes. Could I have some clothes?”

Ah, right.

Once Jihoon is decidedly less naked, the odd couple sit down on Daniel’s lone two-seater in the living room of his studio apartment. Daniel’s brain struggles to fill the silence.

“Are you hungr-”

“How can I hel-”  
Both boys pause, but Jihoon speaks first. “I don’t need to eat. I could though, if it would make you more comfortable.”

Daniel resists the urge to bury his face in his palms because of course Jihoon doesn’t need to eat. He is just a robot after all.

Jihoon continues, “I just recharge on an electrical outlet once a week. I just charged so I should be good for my entire time here. So, since that’s out of the way, how can I help you?”

Jihoon’s big doe eyes fill with a quiet eagerness, and Daniel wonders how engineering ever went about creating that reaction. The future truly is now, is all he can think at first.

“Well I mean it’s a pretty small studio apartment, and it’s just me.” He pauses. “And you now.”

I don’t have that much stuff to begin with, so I don’t think I really need to clean. Or cook, for that matter.”

Jihoon looks amused, for reasons Daniel can’t quite identify. “Sure. But I am here, and since I am, what do you want to do?”

Daniel looks around for inspiration and his eye land on a familiar console. “How much do you know about Super Smash Bros?”

Jihoon makes the expression that people make when they try their hardest to recall a piece of information. Daniel takes the pause in the conversation to really admire how beautiful Jihoon is and suddenly becomes painfully aware of the fact that he has a really cute boy, talking to him, in his apartment, alone. Life never ceases to amaze him.

“I do, now.”

 

“Now? As in you didn’t before?”

Jihoon gives him a look. “That tends to be what ‘now’ means. I just downloaded and processed 10 gigabytes worth of Super Smash Bros characters, maps, and gameplay.”

“You’re kidding me.”

 

“I have no sense of humor.”

Daniel can’t really handle this situation. He looks at Jihoon’s face but sees only a (beautiful) blank expression. Daniel starts physically waving his hands around like somehow it would help him grasp a hold of the situation (It doesn’t.) Eventually, he just clasps his hands together, and concludes, “Okay, but now you really have got to be kidding me?”  
Jihoon bursts out laughing. It’s so much louder and higher than Daniel would have expected based off of the boy’s quiet but pleasantly deep voice. It’s a big laugh, rough at the edges and borderline abrasive. It’s the best thing Daniel has ever heard. It’s also intensely infectious, and Daniel tries to keep a straight face but fails within a second, bursting into giggles that last far beyond Jihoon’s own.

Jihoon nearly has to wipe a tear from his eye. “You should have seen your face! Like, come on. Daniel, even Siri has a sense of humor. God, you are so adorable, do you know that?”

Daniel freezes right before Jihoon does. The thing is though, that for the first time in a very long time, Daniel feels ready to take a risk, to delve into uncharted territory, and so he responds, “Sure, but not as adorable as you.” 

Daniel’s fake confidence shifts into the real as he witnesses the color rush up Jihoon’s face, coloring his cheeks that Daniel barely catches a glimpse of before Jihoon covers his face with his hands. Daniel laughs, feeling that maybe for once in his life Seongwoo was right, about how they really did need to go to San Francisco last weekend.

Jihoon eventually arises, getting over his embarrassment, and insists, “Let’s play.”

Later, with five games well-played and five losses under his belt, Daniel leans in and captures Jihoon’s lips in his. He smiles into the scent of jasmine, the taste of strawberries, and the feeling of Jihoon’s soft hand in his. Daniel has never felt more alive.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading!


End file.
